Productivity of public and private investment in developing countries: A broad international perspective

Using reasonably good data for 1973-80, 1980-85 and 1985-90 for 53 developing countries, fairly standard growth models are estimated to compare the productivity of public investment with that of private investment. The main point noted is that public investment appears more productive than private investment in at least as many instances as suggest the opposite. Much caution is, therefore, urged in making strong claims about the productivity of private investment in developing countries being higher than that of public investment. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd